In general, the prior art feeding and transport systems for isolating and feeding individual paper sheet products from a stack are of the bottom, side or top feeding class. Present devices in general limit the store of documents in the stack because of the considerable variations in the friction induced by dragging a single product against the weight of the stack.
Also such feeding techniques in most cases have the disadvantage of necessitating one product to be fully withdrawn from the stack before a succeeding document may be processed, thus limiting flexibility and speed.
Other devices have the shortcoming of losing control over timing and/or positioning of products being withdrawn from a stack so that later re-timing becomes necessary with use of the withdrawn products in synchronous or closely timed processing equipment.
Typical maximum processing speeds of prior art processing equipment gripping one product at a time is about 12,000 pieces per hour. However, any such equipment cannot be used on-line with high speed equipment capable of processing 40 to 60,000 pieces per hour, unless paralleled.
Further deficiencies of the prior art equipment include (1) complex equipment expensive to purchase and maintain, (2) lack of precision in timing of documents for synchronous operation in on-line operations, and (3) the use of considerable space for the feeding equipment.
Accordingly, it is an objective of this invention to improve the state of the art, to correct the foregoing problems of the art, and to provide high speed feeding equipment capable of on-line or off-line use with high speed rotary presses, or other high speed equipment.